SpaceX is targeting June 5 for the next flight of its massive Starship rocket, the company said Friday.

The highly anticipated test flight— the fourth in a program to bring Starship to operational readiness and make progress toward its eventual reuse—will seek to demonstrate the ability of the Super Heavy first stage to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico and for the Starship upper stage to make a controlled reentry through Earth's atmosphere before it falls into the Indian Ocean.

This mission will carry no payloads as SpaceX seeks additional flight data about the performance of the complex Starship vehicle. It is simultaneously the largest and most powerful rocket ever built and the first launch system ever intended to be fully and rapidly reusable.

As part of its announcement of the flight date, SpaceX provided some information about its learnings from the most recent flight test, Flight 3, which launched on March 14, 2024.

Dissecting Flight 3

During that flight, SpaceX also attempted a soft landing of the Super Heavy first stage. After its separation from the Starship upper stage, as intended, 13 of Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines successfully relit to make a controlled flight through the lower atmosphere. During this boostback burn, however, six of these engines shut down early. Later in the descent, as the rocket neared the sea surface, the rocket was supposed to use the same 13 engines to make a final landing burn.

"The six engines that shut down early in the boostback burn were disabled from attempting the landing burn startup, leaving seven engines commanded to start up with two successfully reaching mainstage ignition," the company said in its recap of the flight. "The booster had lower than expected landing burn thrust when contact was lost at approximately 462 meters in altitude over the Gulf of Mexico and just under seven minutes into the mission."

The cause of this failure was traced to blockage in a filter where liquid oxygen flows into the Raptor engines. Notably, a similar problem occurred during the second test flight of Starship in November 2023. SpaceX says it implemented "hardware changes" to address this blockage issue for the third test flight. Now, the company said, "Super Heavy boosters for Flight 4 and beyond will get additional hardware inside oxygen tanks to further improve propellant filtration capabilities." It will be interesting to see whether the company's engineers have successfully addressed this issue.

As for the Starship upper stage, the vehicle began losing the ability to control its attitude during its coast phase in space. This was found to be due to clogged valves used by reaction control thrusters on the upper stage. The company's update notes that "SpaceX has since added additional roll control thrusters on upcoming Starships." But it is not clear that they will be available for Flight 4. Indeed, the fact that SpaceX is not attempting an in-flight relight of Raptor engines on the Starship upper stage suggests these new roll control thrusters are not yet in place.

Ultimately this lack of attitude control during Flight 3 resulted in a non-nominal reentry to Earth's atmosphere. SpaceX was able to maintain contact with the vehicle down to 65 km in altitude before telemetry was lost due to excess heating.

Back to the basics

On Flight 3, SpaceX achieved some important milestones, including the opening of the Starship payload bay door in space and a small propellant transfer demonstration. Due to the loss of attitude control, however, a planned Raptor rocket engine re-light test was not conducted. This is an important test, as Raptor ignition is needed to perform a controlled reentry—essentially to ensure that Starship returns to a remote section of ocean rather than land.

For the next flight, SpaceX is focused on solving the technical issues observed on Flight 3: the filter blockages observed during Super Heavy's boostback and landing burns, Starship's attitude control during its coast phase, and managing reentry of that vehicle from orbital velocity.

Once these issues are resolved, the company can proceed to more advanced tests, including landing the Super Heavy booster back at the South Texas launch site, deployment of Starlink satellites, and additional tests of propellant transfer essential for NASA's Artemis Program to land humans on the Moon.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The possibly penultimate stack ahead of Starship flight 4. <a href="https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NASASpaceflight</a> <a href="https://t.co/Mm2stRmvW9">pic.twitter.com/Mm2stRmvW9</a></p>&mdash; Jack Beyer (@thejackbeyer) <a href="https://twitter.com/thejackbeyer/status/1794873237064823097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">10 days to Starship Flight 4, IFT-4. <a href="https://t.co/nTJkXZbjom">pic.twitter.com/nTJkXZbjom</a></p>&mdash; SMX 🇺🇸 (@iam_smx) <a href="https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/1793903910220079377?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I dare say that Elon Musk is the greatest person on the planet.

Amazing view of the boost back burn at about 2:30

https://www.spacex.com/launches/miss...onId=earthcare

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Starship and Super Heavy loaded with more than 10 million pounds of propellant in a rehearsal ahead of Flight 4. Launch is targeted as early as June 5, pending regulatory approval <a href="https://t.co/lss0brCZgN">pic.twitter.com/lss0brCZgN</a></p>&mdash; SpaceX (@SpaceX) <a href="https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1795840604972429597?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 29, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The Boeing Crew Flight Test mission is the first flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft with humans onboard. The crew is composed of Commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams. This is the second attempt to launch the mission.

Launch on June 1st at 12:25:40PM EDT (16:25:40 UTC)

Mission: Atlas V launch with Starliner Calypso to the International Space Station
Launch location: Space Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Earth.
Target orbit: Low Earth Orbit; 72.91-by-181.53 kilometers 51.62 degree inclination
Booster: AV-085
Configuration: N22 - No fairing, 2 solid rocket motors, and 2 RL10 engines on the Centaur upper stage. "Body Guard"
Capsule: Spacecraft 3 (Calypso); 1623d 3h 26min 44s turnaround
Capsule history: OFT-1
Rocket trajectory: Northeast hugging the east coast of the United States
Mission Commander: Butch Wilmore - 3rd spaceflight
Mission Pilot: Sunita Williams - 3rd spaceflight
Stats:
· ULA's 161st launch overall and its 3rd launch of the year
· Atlas V's 100th launch, 3rd launch in N22 configuration
· ULA's 75th launch from SLC-41, 83rd launch of Atlas V from SLC-41
· 3rd orbital flight of a Starliner spacecraft and 1st human spaceflight by Boeing
· This mission will bring up to 2 the total of people sent by Boeing to orbit

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****ing scrubbed, again.

Yeah what a pisser. And right after the go, no-go calls too.

It all seemed janky when the helium tank issue happened.

Sounds like today's issue was with a card in the ground support equipment. It's crazy that they've now had separate launches scrubbed for the service module, rocket, and GSE.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Flight 4 of Starship is now targeted to launch as early as June 6, pending regulatory approval<a href="https://t.co/XjreI7nQOp">https://t.co/XjreI7nQOp</a> <a href="https://t.co/Pgg0IqlP24">pic.twitter.com/Pgg0IqlP24</a></p>&mdash; SpaceX (@SpaceX) <a href="https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1796950124838736021?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Starship is just about ready for Flight 4!
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Starship is ready to fly <a href="https://t.co/3PIb5FhHaR">pic.twitter.com/3PIb5FhHaR</a></p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1797499471632519491?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 3, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>



Ship 29 and Booster 11 are currently being destacked for final prep/installation of Flight Termination System.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Destack. Ship 29 is being destacked from Booster 11 for final prelaunch work.<a href="https://t.co/e3xbqPo4OD">https://t.co/e3xbqPo4OD</a> <a href="https://t.co/UuvCFT1qlw">pic.twitter.com/UuvCFT1qlw</a></p>&mdash; Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) <a href="https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1798007846799626446?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 4, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Ship 26 conducted the first static fire at the Massey's test site on Monday.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Yesterday afternoon, SpaceX fired up Ship 26’s engines at the Massey Outpost, making use of their flame trench for the first time.<br><br>🎥 <a href="https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NASASpaceflight</a> <br>📺 <a href="https://t.co/EbISSFkuPN">https://t.co/EbISSFkuPN</a> <a href="https://t.co/HccBYabuca">pic.twitter.com/HccBYabuca</a></p>&mdash; D. Wise (@dwisecinema) <a href="https://twitter.com/dwisecinema/status/1797958071890887022?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 4, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

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SpaceX's next Starship rocket test gets FAA go-ahead

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/space...202812627.html